Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • About Time

      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      I tend to track time differently than I once did. Now I measure time by the length of my hair or fingernails (weeks versus days since my last trim). I don’t generally look at the clock before calling it a night, for what does time have to do with how tired we feel? Nor do I set an alarm to awaken, I simply wake up. In many ways, I woke up years ago to the folly of time, even if I still follow the rules and show up early (as any civilized adult ought to aspire to). In this way, you might say my relationship with time is complicated.

      When we see time for what it is, something inside us shifts. We become collectors of experiences and embracers of moments rather than maximizers of minutes on the schedule. For all my focus on productivity, at the end of the day I only care that I’ve done the essential few things that move the chains forward for me in the direction I wish to go. The rest float away like all the other past initiatives.

      Writing every day forced me to become an efficient writer. There’s no time to waste on things like writer’s block when you must ship the work and get on to other things. Similarly, other things I do every day become automatic for me, that I may check the box and move on to other things. If that sounds transactional, well, so be it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing for me in those moments doing it. When we give something our complete attention for the time necessary to complete it, we may surprise ourselves at just how quickly we can do the work.

      One of the people who works for me was stuck on a presentation he had to deliver to the team, simply overwhelmed by how to structure a slide deck and what to talk about. After being his sounding board for all the built-up stress and despair over the unfairness of having to do this in the first place, I made the deck for him in 30 minutes and quietly sent it to him to personalize in his own way, that he might focus on more important things than a peer presentation. When we get wrapped around the pole on the details of things that aren’t all that important in the end, we waste our time. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to quickly create solutions to problems that I may go back to spending time on more important things. Spending time on my employee wasn’t a waste of my own time, it was an investment in his. I’ll take that trade-off.

      The thing is, I recognize the place that he’s in now in his life. Ten years younger than me, with family obligations that can overwhelm you when you’re just trying to get through the day—I’ve been there, done that. My doing his homework for him wasn’t meant to take him off the hook so much as to show him a clearer future. My priority is to develop an employee who can assess the nature of a commitment and allocate the appropriate amount of focus on it, that he may move on to more essential things. Looking back, I’m sure someone did the same for me once upon a time.

      Life always comes back to our operating system. When we ground ourselves in stoicism, we know that time flies (tempus fugit) and we must therefore seize the day (carpe diem). There’s no time to waste on how we feel about the matter. In the end, the quality of our life is measured in how effective we are at navigating the small things that we may accomplish the big things. What’s bigger for us than using our brief time on this earth on things that matter most?

    • Haven’t Found Right Yet

      “Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it’s safe. It is also out of date. It’s the opposite of originality… Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you’re right you’re set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people. Being right is also boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant… it’s wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug. There’s no talking to them.” — Paul Arden, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be

      It takes an advertising person to call it like it is, and Arden is certainly that. I read all sorts of books just to get a different perspective than my own. Arden sold me on his book with the subtitle: “The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden”, which is pretty clever (for who can argue the point?) and likely sold a few extra copies to people like me who appreciate a good spin of words. It’s not a heavy lift by any means, but there are a few insights like the one above that make it worth the quick read.

      The takeaway here is that holding on to our rightness is suffocating our potential to become something more than who we are now. If we aren’t currently masters of our craft, whatever that is, then we likely haven’t found right just yet (believing we have is simply keeping us from ever reaching it). Looking at the crafts we desire to master with a clear eye, which have we come closest to reaching mastery in? Put another way, if good is the enemy of great, what have we simply settled into good enough at? We owe it to ourselves to stop posturing right all the time and make more mistakes. Good enough is a trap.

      The truth of the matter is, we never quite master anything in our lifetimes, even as we aspire to excellence (Arete). Good enough is often all most people want for themselves, me included. But arete whispers in the quiet moments, challenging the status quo. We must stop dwelling on how right we believe we are to have arrived here and dare to make mistakes more often. Otherwise, we’ll remain in a rut that feels attractive for its familiarity but is simply a destination with no end. We’ll never find excellence in a rut, we must climb up to reach it.

      Carpe diem already.

    • Beauty in Focus

      You’re feeling that ice-cold
      Forgetting the good things
      Caught up in the problems
      Please stop complaining
      Tell me something beautiful
      Lovelier than usual
      Hope is the closest
      Haven’t you noticed
      There’s beauty in focus
      It’s dwelling in the depths of you
      A desperate longing to break through
      — half•alive, Ice Cold

      Over the last month I was focused on an upcoming trip. That proved a distraction from other things (for that’s how it goes), but now that the trip is behind me, focus is developing once again on other essential things. In a world full of distractions, a little focus goes a long way. What we focus on determines the quality of our production, in whatever form that takes—art, writing, work, attention to the needs of others. Focus is beautiful.

      Knowing this, we get to choose what to focus on. We may scroll through our social media feed, or on the ugly political climate, or on how the referees are calling the games, but to what end? None of it matters more than our most important things. We can’t go frittering away our opportunity to do great things, here and now.

      We become what we focus on. For that is the direction in which we inevitably move. We ought to choose something beautiful to move towards. Something calling from within, eager to be released. Feel the urgency of that for a beat. Imagine what we might do next when our heart, mind and eye are locked in on the same thing.

    • To Go Beyond

      “Firstly you need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. Try to do things you’re incapable of.” — Paul Arden

      “The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.” ― Vilayat Inayat Khan

      When you walk up to Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia Gallery in Florence, some of his other sculptures in an unfinished state line the aisle on either side of you. Spending some time with each instead of just rushing past to see David is the best way to see how he released the masterpiece from the marble, as he described it. You can almost see them fighting to break free from the block, just awaiting the help of Michelangelo’s chisel. And so it is when you arrive at David, you understand where he came from—released perfection from a famously imperfect block of marble.

      The interesting thing about that block of marble was that two other artists had begun work on it, gave up on it and it sat partially chiseled and ignored by other artists who couldn’t see the masterpiece within. It wasn’t until Michelangelo saw David within that it became his project. And we are left with the brilliant result, forgetting sometimes the imperfect marble it started as.

      Lately I’ve been wrestling with the imperfect block myself, deciding whether there’s a masterpiece in there or not. To commit and begin chiseling away at something beyond what we are capable of in the moment is the only way to release something exceptional from the average. But why wait? There are no perfect blocks, only something trying to break free from what we have now. So begin with whatever it is we’ve been given and find what calls from within. In those unfinished sculptures is the pain of a masterpiece that never broke free for want of more time.

      The journey to David takes you past unfinished would-be masterpieces
      Michelangelo’s unfinished self-portrait forever trying to break free from the block

    • Breaking Up with Temporality

      “You give yourself to life by leaving temporality behind. Desire for mortal gains and fear of loss hold you back from giving yourself to life.” — Joseph Campbell

      Admittedly, I’ve had a complicated relationship with time. I spent too much of it rushing from one commitment to another, always striving to be early so as not to waste someone else’s time should the universe align itself to create delays. I write this very blog post in a coffee shop having arrived early for a meeting just down the street. Temporality is deeply engrained within me. It’s a hard relationship to break with.

      That doesn’t make it a healthy or enabling relationship. In fact, much of the stress I’ve felt in my lifetime is related to my relationship with time. Productivity calculations in a quarter, splits on a screen as I try to beat some preconceived expectation of how quickly I can complete some workout, or the pressure I put on myself to read or write a certain amount in the time I have available for such things. Time isn’t a great measure of our worth, unless you’re an Olympic athlete or attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube or some such thing. Tempus fugit, indeed.

      So I’ve promised myself I’d break up with temporality, once and for all. Maybe not today, mind you (for I do have these commitments lined up), surely not tomorrow (I have a flight to catch, after all), but very—very— soon. How soon? Well, maybe time wIll tell? But know this: I’m serious this, uh, time.

    • Conducive to Brilliance

      “Don’t rush your most important work. Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline, with variations in intensity, in settings conducive to brilliance.” — Cal Newport, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

      There’s something brilliant hiding in there somewhere. We believe it because we feel it, even if it takes its sweet time meeting us halfway. Or more likely, brilliant is waiting for us to meet it halfway. The truth is, all things have their time and when the work is done we’ll all be delighted for having completed it. Yet we live in a world, and with a mind, that demands results today.

      Newport’s book isn’t revelatory, but it is an important reminder that our most important work takes time—and a little time off—to reach a higher pinnacle. Sure, we want results now, but we’re talking about the work of our lifetime, not some simple project we could push out in a week. The trick is to know the difference, and settle into the journey that takes us there.

      We reach a place in our lives where accomplishment isn’t the primary goal anymore, but contribution is. We want to do work that matters, not just check boxes on a meaningless career path. In moments of clarity, we might see the forest for the trees, but the grind of important work means there’s a whole lot of trees to navigate. It’s natural to wonder: does it matter in the end? Sometimes it’s only a means to an end. Which leads to other questions. And so it is that life is one riddle after another in this way.

      The answer is to set up a routine that is conducive to brilliance. This blog may be all over the place at times, but it’s about the process of writing and publishing something every day that matters most. There are days I curse myself for having begun the journey, but I’ll get that one random like on a post from six months ago or a text message of support from someone that inspires me to keep going. We can always quit tomorrow, right? Just not today.

      The question is whether we’ll run out of runway before that brilliant work can take off. Plenty of great ideas crash and burn in this way. Still, we can’t worry about the length of the runway, only that we’re gaining momentum and lift. So we set a sustainable timeline (runway) and work daily towards achieving liftoff. That we might one day soar.

    • Big Things

      “Big things happen because you do a lot of small things supremely well and they compound over time.” — Jim Collins, Good to Great

      The compounding effect of small things done consistently over time builds momentum in our lives. To do those small things supremely well all the time is a stretch goal, for that is reserved for those destined for personal excellence (Arete). Most people choose good enough.

      The daily standard we set for ourselves is thus essential to how close we ever get to personal excellence. I have a long way to go myself, perhaps you’re tracking better. The question we all must ask ourselves as we immerse in this daily reconciliation with ourselves and time is straightforward: what do we want from life? Every habit, routine and system is built with our why somewhere in our minds, and our success or failure in doing all those small things supremely well is the lag measure of our days (and a lead measure of our lives).

      Taking a microscope to our small things, which way are they directing us? Is today our high point for the balance of our lives or the base for an epic climb to greatness? These next steps matter a great deal given the answer, don’t they?

    • A Walk a Day

      “Walking five miles a day or more provides the type of low-intensity exercise that yields all the cardiovascular benefits you might expect, but it also has a positive effect on muscles and bones – without the joint-pounding damage caused by running marathons or triathlons.” ― Dan Buettner, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest

      Last summer I had a goal to walk 200 miles for a charity and found the time simply by getting up early and getting out there. Nowadays I’m not walking for a charity (perhaps I should) but I’m walking for life. Initially I recruited the pup, but she’s flipped that script around and now recruits me. She’s quickly learned just the right look to give me to get me off the chair and out the door, where she may survey the neighborhood and remind the rabbits and squirrels that she’s the queen of the cul du sac. She’s more of a runner, this pup, and I can tell she’d rather leave the slow guy behind. But a walk is better than a snooze any day.

      Walking five miles is time-consuming, so most people simply won’t take the time. I often won’t take the time either, but I’ve learned that a bit of multitasking helps to get the wheels in motion. As with any habit, once you’ve got a bit of momentum the routine takes hold. I may not be running marathons, but I can walk the length of one in a week. In this way, those walks add up to something substantial. As a bonus, it does both the body and mind a lot of good.

      When we say that we don’t have the time to walk, we’re really just prioritizing something else. When we think of the brevity of this lifetime, just what is so important that we must rush through it? Besides, that walk a day just might extend our lifespan, and more importantly, a healthy and vibrant years. Isn’t that worth a daily investment? So lace up and get out there, for there’s no time to waste.

    • Easter Eggs

      “No one knows the future, but the present offers clues and hints on its direction.” — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

      “An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or another — usually electronic — medium. The term used in this manner was coined around 1979 by Steve Wright, the then-Director of Software Development in the Atari Consumer Division, to describe a hidden message in the Atari video game Adventure, in reference to an Easter egg hunt.” — Wikipedia

      I’ve never been so hip in my life, or maybe excelled enough at video games, to have been fully aware of the existence of Easter Eggs in games and software. Like most people, it was a growing cultural awareness of such things. The thing is, you’ve got to be invested in that particular form in which the Easter egg is hidden to ever be aware of it, let alone understand what it might mean. In this way, Easter eggs are gifts to the loyal fans from the creators.

      When Game of Thrones was peaking 6 or 7 years ago, many people went back and watched it from the beginning, just to get caught up on all the things that were referenced in later episodes. It’s here that the term really took off for those of us not quite invested in video games or coding. A well-written show will hint at the future. These hints will be obvious, “ah ha!” moments for the invested audience. To get the joke, as it were, is part of the mass appeal of such shows.

      The term “Easter egg” is a bit trendy, but great writers have been dropping hints into their work for as long as there’s been works of fiction. Agatha Christie was masterful in setting the scene just so, that what is hidden in plain sight might reveal itself as perfectly obvious later in the story. The delight in her novels was trying to figure things out as you went through the story, knowing full well that she would place as many dead ends into the story (pun intended) as the hints that brought the culprit to justice in the end.

      “The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.” — Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

      All artists offers something of themselves in their work. Some artists literally create something of themselves within their art. Plenty of artists through the years have hidden their own face in their greatest works, that those in the know may delight in finding them. At St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, you can smile at the face of sculptor Anton Pilgram smiling back at you. Knowing that these Easter eggs exist, we may delight in seeing them again as if for the first time.

      Life is full of Easter eggs for us too. We have our symptoms, habits and associates that lead us into trouble or salvation. Sometimes the future is hiding right in plain sight, just like one of those Agatha Christie novels. We ought to be better at seeing the signs, that we may steer towards a safer course. Life isn’t a game, after all. But you saw that conclusion coming from the start, didn’t you?

    • The Gift of One More

      “The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.” ― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

      “The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.” ― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

      (Rest in Peace, Daniel Kahneman)

      Life is complicated and our best intentions don’t always lead to successful outcomes, but in general when we pick a direction for our lives and stick with the incremental steps necessary to stay on that path, we are more likely to become that which we aspire to be than we might have otherwise. We may accept the ambiguity of the future for what it is, even as we work to shape it into what we most want it to look like. For all my carrying on about habits and routines, I know I’m one bad day from having a series of streaks end. There are some days I want to just end a few streaks just to get it over with, until I remember why I established those habits at all.

      There’s a place for randomness in our lives. In fact, our very existence and progression to the present moment consist of one lucky break after another that led us here. It’s a miracle, or a series of miracles, that we rarely celebrate in our rush to get to what’s next. We ought to have enough awareness to celebrate our moment in the sun, even as we have the audacity to plot something greater for ourselves than we’ve already been given. We skate a fine line between proper acknowledgement of the gift at hand and the underlying expectation that there are more presents under the tree with our name on them simply because there’s always been that one more.

      So here we are: we have this one gift of today, with some measure of physical and mental fitness to do something with it. That’s an old theme on this blog, and forgive the repetition, for it’s a reminder to myself as much as anyone else. To build something consequential in this lifetime requires a measure of discipline and focus often missing in our days. If it were easy everyone would be doing it, right? Indeed. So it’s fair to ask ourselves if this is our contribution, or are we just spending the time forever preparing to leap?

      We may never produce that which we aspire to in our lifetime. We may produce it and have it ignored by the universe. That doesn’t make the journey less meaningful. Each day is one more gift delivered to us by who we grew to be yesterday. Knowing this, we ought to at least try to put a bow on the gift of tomorrow, that we might progress forever into the future until all the gifts have all been opened.